Yea, there’s a “One-Hour Photo” place near where I work. Not sure how they stay in business.
Pea Pod.
In this economy? I thought it was wasteful and extravagant in 1996, but it’s been through two recessions. WTH?
And, as far as I know, they just go to regular grocery stores. If I’m paying for delivery, I want you going to super-expensive organic everything foodisserie.
It’s no suprise that Apple’s still around now. The real question is, how long will they last now that Steve Jobs is gone?
Guitar Center. Their stores are really big and must pay an accordingly large rent. Aren’t pawn shops and Craigslist full of perfectly good used guitars, amps, etc.? It amazes me they can sell enough gear to pay those large rents.
I’ve posted before about Batteries Plus. I guess there’s more demand for specialty batteries than I’m aware of. Doesn’t seem the demand would be high enough to support a growing national chain. The one time I’ve been in one there were three employees but no other customers in the store on a Saturday afternoon, and I left without buying anything because they were asking $90 for a replacement battery for our old laptop.
Not surprising at all. There will always be couples having their third wedding anniversaries.
Real film has a different “look” to it, and it can handle wide contrast ranges better than most consumer digicams. But I imagine most photofinishers are more in the business of printing digital pictures than developing film.
K-Mart.
I always buy car batteries from Batteries Plus. You can drive right up to their location in a strip mall and they’ll test your battery and alternator. For a very modest fee they’ll install a new battery and dispose of your old one.
Guitar Center sells a helluva lot more than just guitars. I get a lot of my audio gear there and I’m not even a musician.
Remember when you could get actual electronic components at Radio Shack? Now they seem to survive solely on cheap batteries and Monster cables.
nm (what I have in mind aren’t well-known)
Zeller’s. I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to go there to buy. Every time I’m in there, it feels like I’m just paying more for Walmart (i.e. not great)-quality miscellaneous goods.
You’ve never met my wife.
Not that I’m so much surprised they’re still around, but iomega must’ve adapted in crazy-fast record-time from a huge share of the market in removable storage media (the 100 MB Zip disks and 1 GB Jaz discs, and their respective drives) to the almost immediate transition to super-low cost writable CDs, high capacity HDDs, and thumb drives.
Naw, from 1984 to 2003, Apple was a dawg. It had some success with the Macintosh, but it didn’t sell the way Apple expected or needed, and the company stumbled along until Jobs repositioned it from being a computer company to a consumer electronics company.
So, really, it is quite surprising that they’re still around, and astonishing that they’re as valuable as they are (the stock price has bubbled quite frothily the past year or so), especially considering they were left for dead for pretty much the entirety of the 1990s.
Yep, this too. I live in Michigan, where they used to be headquartered just down the road from me. I used to work at a store in my high school days, even, and there’s barely anymore around.
But, they keep on hangin’ on, somehow.
It was the graphic arts/video industry and desktop publication that pretty much kept them in business through the 1990s, until Jobs returned (1998?) and re-forged the company into what it is today.
They kept afloat just long enough, before they almost drowned. Perhaps from the Wallstreet perspective they were always a dog, but their OSs, hardware and integration wasn’t anything to sneeze at at the time, had a large cult base and certainly kept MS on their toes.
I have to pipe up again for Radio Shack. How they do it I honestly cannot say. It’s the absolute premiere example of a business that should be as dead as Dillinger.
I read someone on Slashdot so confident that Apple will crash into 1990’s level brokenness within three years that he wants to put money into the stock market betting on it.
No, I don’t know why; I think it has something to do with his opinion of their products, product policies, and such.
Sharper Image. Brookstone. Skymall. Seems like a lot of overpriced “luxury” items, yet they are still around (or on the airplane).